This piece uses three main statistics, to come to the conclusion that 1/3 of Australian adults have a drug dependency. Firstly The National Health Survey found that 18.1% of people have had medication in the past fortnight for mental health reasons; secondly that when coupled with the amount of Australians who partake in risky alcohol behaviour this figure jumps to 27%; thirdly the use of illicit drugs by people over the age of 14 brings the reli...

This Discussion Paper follows on from the previous one. It examines the effectiveness of current regulatory arrangements and puts forward new proposals for minimising youth exposure to internet pornography. A section of the report presents the findings of a survey specially commissioned to determine the attitudes of parents to the question of their children's access to pornography.

This paper examines the extent to which youth in Australia is exposed to pornography through the Internet and X-rated videos and summarises the literature on the possible harmful effects of that exposure, drawing from this the conclusion that youth should be protected to a far greater extent than it currently is. Some of the material in this paper is confronting and may offend.

The Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) spent $97 million of taxpayer’s money from 2001-2002 on scholarships for athletes. With each scholarship averaging $23,000 per year, per student, there should be a HECS style sporting scheme. This would entail athletes earning more than $100,000 per annum having to repay the AIS.

Policies towards North Korea under Bush have been shaped by an imperial and cold war framework, compared to the economic relationship sort by South Korea through the Sunshine policy. Great power interests have split Korea in half and this piece recommends that internal Korean relations must be normalized before any international action is taken.

The preoccupation with money and consumption comes at an increasing cost. Many Australians consider that money-hunger conflicts with their deeper values and preferences and results in a society that is too materialistic. There is evidence that many people are deciding to accept lower incomes and consumption levels in order to have more balance in their lives, a phenomenon known as downshifting. This report is the first systematic study of downshi...

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